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Intervening in the Inevitable: Contesting Globalization in a Public Sector Organization

Industrial Relations and Organizational Behaviour Group, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, Andre.Spicer{at}wbs.ac.uk

Peter Fleming

Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, p.fleming{at}jbs.cam.ac.uk

Drawing on data from a study of an Australian public broadcaster (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), this paper demonstrates how the marketization of public sector organizations involves a `discourse of globalization' that legitimates marketization initiatives by making them appear inevitable. This discursive dimension also becomes a site of contestation. We examine three oppositional groups that challenge the apparent inevitability of globalization through a range of discursive tactics. They are surfacing implicitly shared values, appropriating dominant themes of globalization, and recovering traditional notions of public service. The paper explores the socio-political effects of such discursive tactics as they relate to understandings of globalization `from below'.

Key Words: discourse • globalization • public broadcasting • public sector • resistance

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Organization, Vol. 14, No. 4, 517-541 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1350508407078051


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